St. Mary of Winfield Sifting Through the Rubble After Lower Church Destroyed During NYC Flooding

By Emily Drooby and Paula Katinas

WOODSIDE — When Father Christopher O’Connor hears that the weather forecast calls for rain, he says to himself, “Oh, no!”

One can’t blame him for that reaction, especially after what he and his parishioners at St. Mary’s Winfield Church went through on Sept. 1 when the remnants of Hurricane Ida caused a rainstorm so severe, it flooded the lower church, destroyed the parish Adoration Chapel and a faith formation classroom and drowned church pews in 10 feet of water.

The painstaking work of repairing and rebuilding the lower church is expected to cost more than $1 million.

Insurance will cover the costs but that doesn’t mean the headaches are over for Father O’Connor, the church’s pastor. His days are filled with meetings with insurance adjusters, contractors, and representatives from Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens. “As pastor, I’m the one responsible for everything overall,” he said.

The cleanup is still going on — more than a week after the storm. “Ninety-nine percent of the water is out. There still is a little bit of water because it’s seeping out from the walls,” Father O’Connor said.

The chapel walls had to be torn down. The demolition work started on Sept. 8.

“That was hard. I think that was the first time I got a little emotional,” Father O’Connor admitted. “I try to be on an even keel. But when I went to the chapel and they were tearing down the walls, it was hard because we just opened it in February. A lot of time and effort went into it. And prayer.”

The Adoration Chapel had opened Feb. 1 — exactly seven months to the day before the storm.

The parish is determined to rebuild the lower church and the chapel, as well as the faith formation classroom, which was used by Confirmation students.

“The contractor who built the classroom and the chapel is coming back. He already knows he’s doing it again,” Father O’Connor said.

The first step is to complete the massive post-storm cleanup. Among other tasks, workers will have to make sure all of the moisture is out so that mold doesn’t get a chance to set in. The boiler is probably salvageable, he said. Electrical switches and outlets will be replaced.

“I’m a fixer by nature, so I just plan. Some instruction has been given to every contractor on what we need to go forward. A lot of the work was new, so it’s really just replacing what we just did,” Father O’Connor said.

The storm has left scars in the form of terrifying memories. The water was so powerful, it literally knocked down a brick wall underneath a staircase leading to the lower church. The street outside the church, 48th Avenue, became a river, lifting cars up and carrying them with the current. At one point, the NYPD sent in a diver to check the cars to make sure no one was inside.

Parishioners have offered help in the form of manpower and monetary donations. Father O’Connor, in turn, is concerned about them.

“Some of our parishioners are homeless right now. Their basement apartments were flooded. I know of at least three families that are looking for a place and there may be a fourth,” he said.

Catholic Charities is working with the displaced families. And Father O’Connor has been calling real estate agents.

Father O’Connor is confident the church will be able to rebuild. “Jesus will help us,” he said.

A massive cleanup is also taking place at other churches and schools in the diocese.

St. Bartholomew Church, Elmhurst, sustained flooding to its chapel as well as to the rectory.

The gymnasium at St. Bartholomew Catholic Academy was flooded, according to  Principal Denise Gonzalez.

“The gym floor is still wet,” she said on Sept. 13, nearly two weeks after the storm. “We have to air it out to prevent mols”

Gonzalez said repairs can begin once all the moisture is out of the gym.

Father Rick Beuther, pastor of St. Bartholomew, was on the phone with officials from the diocese on the night of the storm, Gonzalez said. “Father Rick was great. He called the diocese and the insurance company came right away to take pictures,” she said.

Congresswoman Grace Meng, who represents Elmhurst, visited the church and the academy Monday morning to get a first-hand look at the cleanup.

Meng also visited with an eighth-grade class.

“She explained FEMA to them and how it works,” Gonzalez said, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

They’re fundraising for anything not covered by insurance. Donations can be made on their give central account here: GiveCentral which can also be found on their main website: www.stmarysofwinfield.com

How an Afghan Writer and Pope Francis Helped a Christian Family Escape the Taliban in Kabul

By Currents News Staff

Afghan writer Ali Ehsani reached out to Pope Francis in August, asking for his help in getting a Christian family hiding in Kabul on a flight our of the country. The Holy Father was moved by their story, and sent Ehsani a message, while mobilizing Vatican diplomats to help the family in need.

“I told them that the Pope was praying for them,” Ali said, “that he was thinking of them during that time, and that they should remain calm. They said: “Let’s hope they will be able to save us.” In the end, they managed to make it to Italy.”

By mid-August, the Vatican acted with other institutions to get them out of Kabul. The Italian military took them to Rome, where they are now being cared for by the “Meet Human” foundation.

EU politician, Silvia Costa, was a vocal advocate for their evacuation. On Twitter, she announced their safe arrival in Italy. One of the family members that appears in her photo wanted to give Pope Francis the shirt he wore when he escaped from the Taliban and began his new life.

“This is a typical clothing item in Afghanistan that a young Afghan boy was wearing when he fled the country and arrived here in Italy,” Ali said. “In those four to five days in which they were fleeing, he always wore this shirt. He even had it on at the Kabul airport, where the picture was taken.”

The Holy Father deeply appreciated the gift from a family targeted for refusing to renounce their Christian faith.

Currents News Update for Monday, 9/13/21

Pope Francis is in Slovakia. Yesterday, the Holy Father was in Budapest. He referenced a growing anti-immigrant sentiment happening in countries like these.

Members of the NYPD gathered at Mass at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn to remember the lives lost on September 11.

It’s back to school for one million public school students here in New York City and the day got off to a shaky start.

Despite the challenges of the pandemic, one priest in the Diocese of Brooklyn opened up a food pantry to help the needy and now, Father Dwayne Davis is being recognized as a COVID-19 hero.

‘Upbeat, Healthy’ Pope Francis Calls For Freedom in Both Civil Society and Church

By Currents News Staff and Inés San Martín

BRATISLAVA (Crux) — Speaking to civil authorities in Slovakia, a country that for decades was under one-party Communist rule, Pope Francis warned against the “single-thought” system of consumerism and ideological colonization.

“In these lands, until just a few decades ago, a single-thought system stifled freedom,” Pope Francis said on Sept. 13. “Today another single thought-system is emptying freedom of meaning, reducing progress to profit and rights only to individual needs.

Today, as then, the salt of the faith acts not by reacting in worldly terms, by engaging in culture wars, but by quietly and humbly sowing the seeds of God’s kingdom, especially by the witness of charity.”

The pontiff also said that it’s his hope that Slovaks won’t allow the rich “flavors of your finest traditions” to be ruined by the “superficiality of consumerism and material gain. Or by forms of ideological colonization.”

Though he didn’t go into specifics, Pope Francis has often used the term “ideological colonization” to refer to issues pertaining to the family and life, including abortion and euthanasia.

The pontiff’s words came Monday after a private meeting with President Zuzana Čaputová, a 48-year-old mother of two who became the youngest president in the history of Slovakia in 2019.

During his remarks to civil authorities and the diplomatic corps, Pope Francis made a point of supporting the European Union as nationalistic sentiments fueled by populist leaders grow, particularly in the countries of the Visegrád group — Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Poland.

Čaputová is an exception, and in her remarks she warned against populism, national selfishness, fundamentalism and fanaticism, and the exploitation of religion for political objectives.

The leader of a nation that is at the heart of Europe, surrounded by countries such as Poland and Hungary that often resort to pro-Christian messages to ban Muslim refugees from the Middle East, she underlined that any form of anti-Semitism and religious intolerance is irreconcilable with Christianity.

In his remarks, Pope Francis said fraternity is necessary for the “increasingly pressing process of integration.”

“All the more so, in these days when, after long and trying months of pandemic, fully conscious of the difficulties to be faced, we look forward with hope to an economic upturn favored by the recovery plans of the European Union,” he said.

However, the pontiff added, this cannot mean succumbing to impatience and the lure of profit.

Economic recovery, he argued, is not in itself sufficient in a world that is currently itself “a crossroads, in which all are interconnected.”

The pontiff said Slovakia is called to be “a message of peace in the heart of Europe,” particularly as “battles for supremacy are waged on various fronts.”

“May this country reaffirm its message of integration and peace,” he said. “And may Europe be distinguished by a solidarity that, by transcending borders, can bring it back to the center of history.”

To the Catholic hierarchy: The center of the Church is not the Church

After his meeting with the country’s civil authorities, he addressed Slovakia’s Catholic leaders.

“Living within the world means being willing to share and to understand people’s problems, hopes and expectations,” he said during a meeting with the bishops, priests, and religious men and women in Bratislava’s Cathedral of St. Martin. “This will help us to escape from our self-absorption, for the center of the Church is not the Church!”

He urged those present to leave behind the “undue concern for ourselves, for our structures, for what society thinks about us,” and instead become immersed in the lives of peoples and try to address their spiritual needs and expectations.

Answering his own question as to what people expected, he said freedom, creativity, and dialogue.

Freedom, Pope Francis said, is the key to humanity, as human beings were created free, and as Slovakia learned during the years of Communist rule, whenever freedom is attacked, violated, or suppressed, humanity is disfigured and violence, coercion and the elimination of rights follows.

The Church too can fall into this temptation, believing it’s “better to have everything readily defined, laws to be obeyed, security and uniformity, rather than to be responsible Christians and adults who think, consult their conscience and allow themselves to be challenged.”

“A Church that has no room for the adventure of freedom, even in the spiritual life, risks becoming rigid and self-enclosed,” he said. “Some people may be used to this. But many others — especially the younger generations — are not attracted by a faith that leaves them no interior freedom, by a Church in which all are supposed to think alike and blindly obey.”

Speaking about creativity, Pope Francis argued that faced with the loss of the sense of God and of the joy of faith, it is useless to complain and “hide behind a defensive Catholicism, to judge and blame the world. We need the creativity of the Gospel.”

Lastly, speaking about dialogue, he said that a Church that forms the faithful in interior freedom and responsibility is able to be creative by tapping into their history and culture, capable of engaging in dialogue with the world: “Those who confess Christ without being ‘ours,’ with those who are struggling with religion, and even with those who are not believers.”

Later in the day, Pope Francis was scheduled to meet with representatives of Slovakia’s Jewish community and pay a visit to the Bethlehem center, run by the Missionaries of Charity, the religious order founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

In Slovakia, Pope Francis Encouraged Priests to Shorten Their Homilies

Currents News Staff

Pope Francis was greeted with cheers from the crowd and a welcome from Archbishop Stanislav Volensky, the president of the Slovak bishops’ conference, as he walked into the Cathedral of St. Martin to meet with clergy and other religious leaders.

The Holy Father began his speech expressing his desire to walk with the church in Slovakia.

“The Church is not a fortress, a stronghold, a lofty castle, self-sufficient and looking out upon the world below,” Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis encouraged freedom, creativity and dialogue to keep the church from becoming self-absorbed. He even gave the clergy some practical advice to keep their homilies to 10 minutes.

“A professor I had would say that a homily should have internal coherence: an idea, an image and an emotional effect, so that people go home with an idea, an image and something that moved their heart,” the pontiff said.

St. Thomas Aquinas Food Pantry Given ‘Brooklyn’s COVID Heroes’ Award by Eric Adams

By Jessica Easthope

Father Dwayne Davis looks at a glass door full of pictures that’s become known as the “wall of fame” at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Flatlands, Brooklyn.

In the pictures are the more than 60 volunteers who helped out at the parish food pantry during the height of the pandemic.

“In a real sense that wall of fame is part of our parish history, when we tell our COVID story that’s definitely going to be a part of it,” said Father Davis.

He says he wouldn’t be a COVID-19 hero without all those people, that’s what his new award says. He was given it by Brooklyn Borough President and democratic Mayoral candidate Eric Adams.

From April to August of 2020, St. Thomas Aquinas opened a food pantry that quickly became a massive operation. It was the first parish pantry to have a drive-up option. And in that time, it fed more than 69,000 families.

“People were struggling trying to make ends meet,” he said. “Some people had money to pay the rent but not get food and for us to be able to help them in that way was a great joy.”

Father Davis says the food pantry’s reach will forever be part of parish history, but more than that it’s part of its legacy.

NYPD Officers Lost on 9/11 Honored at Mass in Diocese of Brooklyn

By Jessica Easthope

Members of the NYPD gathered over the weekend to remember the lives lost on September 11, 2001. 23 officers died that day, but many more have died since due to 9/11 related illnesses.

NYPD Chaplain Monsignor Robert Romano recognized them during mass at Our Lady of Guadalupe church in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.

Family members of officers killed in the terrorist attacks sat with department officials who recognized their service and sacrifice.

“When we say we never forget we really mean it and this is part of that continuance where we get together, we honor those who have fallen, we honor their sacrifice and we keep their memory alive,” said NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea.

“9/11 is still a part of us, I buried a police officer only last week, he died of 9/11 disease and we have several other people in the hospital, who are battling 9/11 diseases every day,” said Monsignor Robert Romano the NYPD’s Assistant Chief Chaplain.

More than 200 NYPD officers have died of 9/11 related illnesses.

Catholic News Headlines for Friday, 9/10/21

A morning that changed everything — burned in our memory, breathed deep into our souls.

A day that keeps taking, a death count that keeps rising. But tonight, on Currents News — the resilience that remains, unwavering and unshakeable.

Stories shared for the first time for a higher purpose. We pledged to never forget, but what about those who will never remember?

A new mission that’s perhaps the most tolling — teaching the next generation about Sept. 11 — 20 years later.

NYPD Chaplain: 9/11 Is Alive and Well and it Rears its Ugly Head Constantly

Currents News Staff

Even though 20 years have passed, most people still, and will always remember where they were on 9/11. Msgr. Robert Romano from Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Brooklyn is assistant chief chaplain for the NYPD. He is one of those people who will always remember.

Currents News spoke with him in the days leading up to this somber anniversary and asked him where he was on that fateful morning.

Peaceful Tomorrows Advocates for Nonviolence 20 Years After 9/11 Terror Attacks

By Jessica Easthope

Over the last 20 years, Colleen Kelly has made it her mission to get justice.

“I can’t get to the other side until people have been held accountable for everything that’s happened since then, not just the people who conspired to murder three thousand people but everything that’s happened,” said Colleen.

Her little brother, Bill, was at Windows on the World on September 11, 2001. In the months that followed her horrific loss, Colleen found her grief mirrored in so many others – people who also lost someone and wanted the same thing she did.

“On a walk for healing and peace we met and became the best friends you never wanted to know,” Colleen said.

Together they started Peaceful Tomorrows – an organization seeking nonviolence in the pursuit of justice for their loved ones.

“Our mission was to really think hard about ways to respond that would not continue cycles of violence, ways to bring them to account that wouldn’t harm others,” she said.

Peaceful Tomorrows sent 9/11 families to Afghanistan to meet with people there who lost family members during al-Qaeda’s terror campaign. But Colleen can’t help but remember the human loss she often felt was beyond her control.

2,977 people died in the terror attacks on 9/11. The war in Afghanistan claimed the lives of 2,400 U.S. service members and 50,000 Afghan civilians. 30,177 Global War on Terror veterans have died by suicide, and just hours before it was declared over an attack killed 13 service members and at least 90 Afghans.

“This could have been different, there doesn’t have to be a militaristic response all the time and I know that sounds really naive and certainly 20 years ago it sounded incredibly naive, but it’s not, it didn’t work,” Colleen said.

Throughout her work, Colleen has traveled to Guantanamo Bay, where five men have been charged for their involvement in the 9/11 terror attacks. She wants to see Guantanamo closed.

“I have this quote on my refrigerator that says “Justice will not come until those who are not injured are just as indignant as those who are,” she said.

Colleen stands firm in that viable nonviolent alternatives exist.

“I think that God wants a just world,” she said. “And that God’s not going to do this for us but He gives us the opportunity all the time to work toward justice.”

If you want to donate to Peaceful Tomorrows or become a member, you can visit peacefultomorrows.org